An Overview of Twitter Clients for Linux

Micro-blogging sites are everywhere these days. There's Jaiku, FriendFeed, Pownce, Tumblr, and Identi.ca, to name a few. For many, though, the original micro-blogging site is the best: Twitter. It certainly has the biggest userbase, if nothing else. If you don't know what micro-blogging is and how it is different from regular blogging, check out one of the
manyonlineTwitterintroductions.

One thing that has helped Twitter become as popular as it has is the Twitter
API. For users of Twitter, this ability for nearly any developer to
create applications that work with the service means that in addition to posting via a
browser or my cell phone, I can post from a score of different Desktop applications.

Here are some of the Twitter applications for Linux. They fall into three groups: native Linux applications, Firefox Extensions, and AIR applications.

Native Applications

Twitux is a native Gnome client for twitter. The version that
is in the Ubuntu 8.04 repositories is out of date and partially
broken, and it may be that way in the application repositories for your
distribution, so be sure to check the Twitux home page for the latest
version. To install the source, first install required libraries, and
then perform the standard "./configure;
make; make install" steps. On my Ubuntu 8.04 box this
meant doing the following:

After installation completed there was an entry for Twitux
under Applications
> Internet. The program can also be launched from
the command line with 'twitux'.

The user interface for Twitux is spartan yet functional. The
various timelines are available under the View menu. The application
preferences and account settings can be accessed from the Settings
menu. The Twitter menu has options for creating new tweets, sending
direct tweets to friends, following someone, and refreshing. As far as
I could see, there aren't any options for marking tweets as favorites
or re-tweeting a old tweet. To reply to a tweet, you simply
double-click it in the timeline.

gTwitter is a Twitter client built using the Mono libraries.
If it is not in your distribution's application repository, then it can
be downloaded as either source, or a Mono binary from the project
website. In order to run or compile gTwitter, you need to have the mono
libraries installed. Refer to your distribution's documentation for how
to do this. On Ubuntu, installing the needed libraries was automatic as
part of the 'apt-get
install gtwitter' process. On systems that use Yum, the
process should be similarly automated.

gTwitter is even more minimal than Twitux. This is partly due
to the application being in beta. But some of the minimalism is on
purpose. It eschews a menu bar altogether and forces you to right-click
on its notification area icon to get to the Preferences window, for
example. Some planned features, such as sending direct messages, are
not yet implemented as of this writing. There also does not seem to be
a way to reply to tweets at this time. You can do it manually from the
chat-like entry box at the bottom of the main window, but a shortcut
button of some kind would be nice.

Firefox Extensions

These three extensions let you interact with Twitter right
from Firefox. They can all be installed from the Firefox
Add-Ons site. TwitKit and TwitterFox offer similar
functionality, but in different ways. TwitKit loads as a sidebar.
TwitterFox, on the other hand, installs itself as a "t" icon in the
right corner of the Firefox status bar. The main window is opened and
closed by clicking on the icon. When new tweets arrive, TwitterFox
displays them as pop-up messages similar to the pop-up message that
appears when a file finishes downloading. Of the two, TwitKit is more
fully featured with more timeline views and shortcuts for
replying to tweets and marking tweets as favorites.

TwitterBar is an extension that works well alongside any
Twitter client. Instead of being a client to read Twitter posts, it
provides a simple way to post what website you are currently viewing to
your Twitter timeline. What it does is add a small dot to your Firefox
location bar. When you hover your mouse over the dot it turns into a
plus button. Click on it and you are prompted to enter in your Twitter
login information. The URL is then posted to your timeline with
"Currently Browsing:" tacked on before the link. For good measure it
runs the URL through the TinyURL
URL shortening service beforehand so that you don't have to worry about
really long URLs getting chopped off due to the 140 character limit of
Twitter.

AIR Applications

The rest of the applications I'll be covering are built using
Adobe's cross-platform AIR environment. For more on AIR, and how to
install it, see "An Introduction to AIR". For whatever reason, AIR
seems to be the environment of choice for developing Twitter
applications, and the most advanced Twitter applications are found
here. They are all installed via the Adobe AIR Application Installer,
and all of them work with the Linux Alpha version of AIR.

twitterAIR is one of the first Twitter applications released
using AIR. This is a serviceable app, but somewhat lacking in features when
compared to other Twitter clients. With the exception of
TweetDeck, it also has the largest screen footprint of any of the
Twitter apps I've seen, which may be a good or bad thing depending on
your preferences.

This attractive Twitter application is nice looking and has
good features, but it is a bit buggy, and crashed on me several times
during testing, so I can't recommend it. The instability is likely due
to the alpha nature of AIR for Linux, so as new versions of AIR are
released, the issues should go away.

This is one of the few AIR applications to use native window
borders, and the only Twitter AIR client I came across that does so. As
such, it will fit in
better with native Linux applications. It also has a good mix of
features including shortcuts to reply to tweets, and send direct
messages. You can also specify in which corner of the screen the pop-up
notifications of new tweets appears.

TweetDeck is a Twitter client for addicts. Instead of viewing
a single timeline at a time, this AIR application lets you view them side by side in
multiple columns. You can also create custom columns for different
people you're following. For example you could create a "Family" group
that will just display tweets from family members, an "Office" group
that just displays tweets from co-workers, and a "Linux" group that just
displays Tweets from Linux-related sites and people who regularly tweet
about Linux.

TweetDeck is easily the largest Twitter client,
screen-real-estate-wise. But it is also one of the most full-featured
clients out there. If you are becoming overwhelmed by the number of
tweets you're receiving and need some way to make sense of the chatter,
TweetDeck is the tool you'll want to use.

This is one of my favorite Twitter applications. It is not
only one of the most full featured Twitter clients out there, it is
also stable and easy to use. Twhirl can also connect to
Pownce, Jaiku, Identi.ca,
and FriendFeed. It can also connect to your Seesmic account but
you can't post videos to it directly from Twhirl.

Twhirl includes shortcuts for marking
favorite tweets, replying, direct messaging, searching for users, and
much more. This is the application to beat and the one I used as the
yardstick to compare all of the others.

Posty is similar to TwitterBar in that it is not designed as a
regular Twitter client. Instead it is a program that you use to post to
Twitter. It goes a lot further than TwitterBar though. Posty's main
trick is that it lets you post to Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Tumblr, Identi.ca, and FriendFeed simultaneously. This is
very useful for those of us who have accounts on two (or more) of these services.
You can post to one or all of them by simply checking and unchecking
the various services.

The only downside that Posty currently has is that it forgets my
login information when
it closes and I have to re-enter it every time I launch it. To be fair,
this is not the fault of Posty, but rather an issue with
the Linux alpha version of AIR. Specifically, the Linux alpha doesn't
support secure local storage, the feature Posty uses for storing passwords
properly. Once that feature is added to AIR for Linux I will
probably use posty more than I do (and my various micro-blogs will be
updated more often as a result). In fact, with the exception of Tweetr,
all of the AIR applications mentioned here forget login credentials
(username and password, or just the password) when they are closed because
they use this missing feature. I
guess the real question is, if Tweetr is not saving my password securely
the 'standard' way, how is it saving it?

Other Clients

There is something about Twitter that has captured the hearts of
developers world-wide. It seems like there is a new Twitter client released or
"works-with-Twitter" website or service introduced every other week. Even though I
would have liked to include them, there are other Twitter applications
out there that for one
reason or another could not be in this article. The biggest
no-show is Spaz.
This open-source AIR application utilizes features of AIR that are not
yet supported in the Linux version of the AIR runtime. Because of this,
you get the following error message when you try to install it:

The .air file is not actually damaged, it's just that AIR for
Linux doesn't know what to do with some of what it sees in the package.
This error will go away once the Linux version of AIR reaches feature
parity with AIR for Windows and MacOS X. Adobe's time line for this is
sometime towards the end of 2008. From what I saw when I tried Spaz for
a few minutes on a
friend's iMac, it is a very nice Twitter client, as good as Twhirl in
nearly all respects.

The Winner?

It's hard to pick a clear winner here.

Of the two native
applications, I
like Twitux best. It's simple, but it works well. The two Firefox
extension clients are OK, but I'm not the type of person who always has
Firefox
open and in view, so using them regularly is probably not going to
happen.

As far as the AIR clients are concerned, my favorite is
Twhirl. It has the most advanced set of features of any of the clients
and it works with other micro-blogs to boot. I do like TweetDeck, but
I'm not enough of a Twitter addict to really make use of all of its
features, as fancy as they are.

The two non-clients — TwitterBar and Posty — are both
keepers. They work alongside the various Twitter clients
instead of directly competing with them. Posty's trick of simulataneously posting to all of my micro-blogs is a real plus.

Give the various clients a try and see which ones you prefer.
There's no shortage out there, so you're sure to find something that
you like.

There is a new Twitter client which is written in Java, so works in all platforms. Try out TweetTwain, it is free for personal use. There are many interesting features like branding, keyword monitoring, statistics, multiple accounts support, twitter chat etc.

I thank the writer friend for his writings on your site. I read all of it and i need to read new writings anymore. For the time being, i watched this type of topic on facebook and i liked it so much. In addition, it's one of the rare topics on the site.

I thank the writer friend for his writings on your site. I read all of it and i need to read new writings anymore. For the time being, i watched this type of topic on facebook and i liked it so much. In addition, it's one of the rare topics on the site.

http://mike.verdone.ca/twitter/
It's a commandline twitter client. Pretty handy! I use this once in a while 'coz I tweet only when I'm wasting time and then I just open browser and waste my time on many sites including twitter :)

There is one aspect about Twitter clients that is not taken care about almost anywhere, and that is security. Most of the Twitter clients I've tested (KDETwitter plasmoid, Twitux, Twitbin, gTwitter...) use plain text communications with Twitter API, sending username+password in cleartext on EVERY UPDATE.

Twitter clearly recommends using SSL for any client, but sadly it seems speed of development and functionality still beats security in today's world.

Do you know of any Twitter clients that use SSL connections? I just found one: Qwit

For example, if you are tweeting the status of your email server (yes, I have seen it done) and you need to watch that traffic while watching your own personal traffic, then you could have two up (or, in my case, if I have to update a status on a generic account). Does it make it better? Keeps me from having to log in to multiple accounts throughout the day. Your frustration and password tracking levels may very.

One advantage to the non-browser plug-ins is if you don't keep a browser open. A second advantage is if you have multiple accounts you are monitoring or posting to. For example, if you are tweeting the status of your email server (yes, I have seen it done) and you need to watch that traffic while watching your own personal traffic, then you could have two up (or, in my case, if I have to update a status on a generic account). Does it make it better? Keeps me from having to log in to multiple accounts throughout the day. Your frustration and password tracking levels may very.

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